Practical Advice for Profitable Travel Blogging with Tim Leffel

Are you looking for practical advice to help your travel blog become profitable? Look no further than expert travel writer and travel blog pioneer Tim Leffel! Join us for a fun interview in today’s episode.

Listen to new episodes of Travel with Jack and Kitty every day! Subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Show Notes: Links to Stuff We Talk About

Tim Leffel’s Website
This is the portal for Tim’s world…you’ll find links to his blogs, books and socials.

Blog Articles by Tim Leffel
Here’s some of our favorite blog articles from Tim’s blogging business site. We think you’ll find them very helpful and interesting: How Much Do Travel Writers Make?, There’s No Instant Success in Travel Blogging, Step One for Travel Blogging Success: Find Your Niche, and 4 Tactics That Are Working Now for Travel Writers and Bloggers.

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Show Transcription: Practical Advice for Profitable Travel Blogging with Tim Leffel

Segment: Intro to Episode

Jack: Today’s guest is one of my favorite travel writers.

Kitty: Tim Leffel is an accomplished author, blogger and entrepreneur.

Jack: Yeah, and he’s the author of a book called Travel Writing 2.0 – which is basically the reason Kitty and I got into travel blogging. I love this book so much, and Tim just released a new edition.

Kitty: Now, if you are a travel blogger or creative artist you are going to want to listen to Jack’s chat with Tim. It’s going to give you a lot of insight into what it means to be a full-time content creator and travel writer.

Jack: So, sit back, grab a nice warm pumpkin spice lutefisk latte and join us for a very fun episode.

Kitty: It’s our Special Guest Sundays series and today we’re joined by Award-winning travel writer Tim Leffel.

Segment: Intro to Hosts and Show

[Musical Theme with fade out]

Jack: Hi, I’m Jack

Kitty: and I’m Kitty

Jack: and we’re

Together: Jack and Kitty!

Kitty: And this is Travel with Jack and Kitty – where we highlight the best of the midwest.

Jack: We explore life in the heartland of America…with plenty of laughs and uff-da’s along the way.

Kitty: So join us as we give you a little slice of Minnesota nice, on today’s episode of Travel with Jack and Kitty!

Make the most out of your trip to the Midwest! Click here to download for free.

Segment: Jack’s Interview with Tim Leffel

[Musical Theme with fade out]

Kitty: I’m really excited about today’s show.

Jack: Me too. Remember guys, every Sunday we do a special series called Special Guest Sundays where we are joined by special guests on account of it being Sunday.

Kitty: These episodes are a bit longer and are aimed at helping aspiring travel bloggers, vloggers and content creators.

Jack: Yup, we pick the brains of successful folks – like today’s guest – and hopefully get you some helpful tips and tricks you can use to start earning money doing what you love.

Kitty: And remember, this is a daily podcast, so Monday through Saturday it’s Jack and I goofing off, having fun and bringing you along for the ride.

Jack: Yup, we travel all over the midwest and we even travel back in time to share with you how the midwest became, well, the best! So be sure to follow the podcast if you want a good chuckle all while learning something new every single day.

Kitty: Well, I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot today from your interview with Tim. Why don’t you take it away, Jack!

Jack: Thanks, Kitty. Well friends, I’m super excited because we are about to chat with Award-winning travel writer Tim Leffel, author of The World’s Cheapest Destinations, Travel Writing 2.0, and the living abroad book A Better Life for Half the Price.

He is also editor of the narrative web publication Perceptive Travel, named “best online travel magazine” by the North American Travel Journalists Association and “best travel blog” by SATW. He has contributed to more than 50 publications as a freelancer and runs 5 online travel magazines and blogs as an editor/publisher. He’s on the advisory board of NATJA, is North American Conference Director for TBEX, and is a media member of SATW and the Adventure Travel Trade Association. In short, Tim’s the real deal. An expert travel writer.

In fact, on a personal level, I gotta say that Tim’s book “Travel Writing 2.0” was very influential for both Kitty and I when we first started taking “Travel with Jack and Kitty” seriously. Unlike a lot of gurus and guides, Tim doesn’t sugarcoat things. He’s a straight shooter who tells it like it is. Meaning, he’s not selling some get-rich quick system of travel blogging. He’s being honest and genuine – you won’t make a lot of money for awhile, but if you stick with it and persist no matter what, through some trial and some error (hopefully less error if you read his book), you will succeed. At least, that’s how I would describe Tim’s book. I’m stoked because I think Tim’s got a new edition of the book coming out soon – and I’m sure he’ll talk all about that.

Well, he’s been so patiently waiting, sitting in our luxurious green room here at the Travel with Jack and Kitty World Headquarters sipping on the champagne we provide to all guests, and munching on the finest of Wisconsin cheeses…and Minnesota lutefisk…so now that this exhaustive (and exhausting) introduction is over, it brings me great pleasure to say…

Welcome to the show, Tim!

Tim: Hey Jack, thanks for having me on. I know that’s a long one, but it’s partly because I’m old and I’ve been doing this a while. So I started blogging in 2003, which was definitely the pioneer day. So I’ve been through it all.

Jack: You really have. You’re the guy that started blogging.

Tim: Yeah, it was different. There were about five budget travel bloggers then and I knew them all. It’s a little different now.

Jack: A little bit. It feels like every, maybe I’m wrong and maybe it’s cause we live in, we live in Winona, Minnesota, which is like a little college town, but it feels like every, maybe I’m being biased, but it feels like every female in a, in the English writing program, you see at a coffee shop working on their travel blog. Like that is the go-to like, “Hey, mom and dad, I got my degree in creative writing, now I’m going to travel the world and be an influencer and be this amazing travel blogger.” So I feel like you’re up against like tens of thousands of fresh.

Tim: Yeah, but like we talked, like you mentioned before, it’s not a get rich quick scheme. It does take a few years. So that they will, a lot of them will eventually drop out because it’s not paying off. But I think it is probably a more lucrative path than writing for literary magazines or, you know, going into the PhD program in creative writing and hoping you’ll get a teaching gig someday.

Jack: Absolutely. So you said 2003 you started?

Tim: Yeah, which is a long time ago, but what’s also interesting is people can’t fathom this now, but that was before YouTube, before Facebook. Even it was right around when affiliate programs started and Amazon’s was the first one. And then, you know, others kind of piled on after that when they saw how well it worked, but you couldn’t just like put a link to REI or Expedia in your blog and you know, make a commission back then. And our only real ad option was AdSense. And so it’s gotten a lot easier. I mean, it’s easy to pine for the good old days with less competition, but it was also harder to make a buck then.

Jack: Yeah, oh, I bet. Well, tell me, I mean, this kind of it’s a nice transition for folks listening. What can you kind of in your own words define like, what is the difference between a travel writer, a travel blogger and a travel author? I guess in my head, a travel writer might be somebody who gets hired, a travel blogger has their own website, travel author might either get a publishing deal or self-publish on Amazon or something. It feels like you’re doing kind of a combination of all those things, but tell me how you’re making a go of it, not in 2003, but in 2023. How would you kind of summarize what you do on a day-to-day basis?

Tim: Yeah, I mean, there is kind of a Venn diagram there for those terms. I think a lot of people are all three of those and then some are only freelancers. Some are only bloggers. Um, I don’t think many people are only authors. You know, that implies you’ve written a book, but usually you’re doing other things because it’s hard to make money from books alone, although some people manage. 

“I stress in that book, you know, the traveling book and the course I run that it’s much, much healthier to have multiple streams of income, no matter what you’re doing. If you get too dependent on one thing, that gets kind of scary.”

Tim Leffel

I mean, I stress in that book, you know, the traveling book and the course I run that it’s much, much healthier to have multiple streams of income, no matter what you’re doing. If you get too dependent on one thing, that gets kind of scary. And a lot of people found that out during the P, but, you know, some things got hit worse than others.

For example, if you were an Instagram influencer, your income pretty much dropped to zero. But if you were making money from a blog, you could at least pivot a little bit and, you know, talk about traveling in your local area or doing road trips or, you know, you could write about food more. You know, there’s a lot of other things you could do to at least keep, you know, keep your, your, your, um, audience tuning in and same if you were a YouTuber, but, um, you know, everything did drop off for a while there, but I think for most of us after four or five months, it started slowly improving and then eventually it got back to normal.

I think most bloggers do a little bit of freelancing at least, or they do something else on the side, like maybe they’re running tours, or they’re doing speaking engagements, or something else in the mix. And then a lot of freelancers do have their own site, it’s just not doing as much, they’re not dedicated to it. But I think most travel writers that are successful are their hustlers to some extent, in the best sense of the word, and trying to find other ways to meet their monthly bills because you got to string more than one or two things together these days to make four or five grand a month.

Jack: Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. Tell me a breakdown of how much of your income, I mean, I don’t need specific numbers, but in percentage, how much of your income comes from books versus other stuff? Travel blogging versus being hired by somebody? I mean, is there kind of a priority in your head? Are you blog first or when you sit down every day, what is your priority?

Tim: I’m mostly working on my own sites and that’s where most of the money comes from, but I would say book royalties are about a fifth of my income. So it’s definitely decent. Um, freelancing goes up and down and a lot of that just kind of falls in my lap because people get in touch with me because they want a series about Mexico or they want an article about living abroad or whatever. I don’t do a whole lot of querying these days, but I do some.

But yeah, as far as, so I would say my own sites are probably two-thirds to even three-quarters of my income, but there’s a lot of variance in there because some of it’s display ads, some of it’s affiliate ads, some of it’s direct advertising, and then this all kind of gets mixed together.

I’m the co-founder of a blogger agency where basically we’ll go out and do a deal with a company, but we’re going to pull in 8 or 10 other bloggers and do this comprehensive thing because if I just go pitch them on my cheapest destinations blog, they’re not going to care. But if I say, okay, we’ve got 12 blogs here, we’re going to reach a million plus people, then we can start talking about numbers that they care about. 

You know we did a deal with Starwood one time now that’s part of Marriott, but it kind of totally opened up my eyes because they spent $12,000 with us on this one side of mine. And for me, that was huge. And the guy said to me after like, “Oh, we’re really happy with the results. You know, this is the smallest campaign we’ve ever done.” And I started thinking, you know, I got to find a way to like present some bigger numbers here somehow.

Jack: Yeah. Wow. Is that. I mean, is that, and so that’s you plus, it’s kind of a collective or is it your?

Tim: Yeah, there’s two of us that co-founded it. And then actually my wife does the sales and the admin for it. So we kind of made that a family business, which is nice. And so when we’re traveling, we’re kind of both on the laptop, getting some stuff done. But yeah, my sites are involved sometimes and sometimes they’re not, but yeah, it’s just a way to kind of spread the, spread the love out and spread the income out, you know, and, and get some of those larger deals.

Jack: Run me through and tell listeners the, you have five sites.

Tim: Yeah. One of them is the travel writing sites. So that’s basically for other travel writers, but the other four are for consumers and it kind of runs the gamut. The oldest one is the cheapest destinations blog, but I have one that’s high end and I actually use my first and middle name for that as a pen name so that I don’t completely muck up my Google profile. But so I have a luxury site and I have a budget travel site and I’ve got two that are in between.

Jack: Gotcha. Was that, I mean, what’s the advantage to niching down? Is there a, I mean, hypothetically, a newbie like me would probably hear that and be like, oh, well, if you’ve got five sites, you could put them all on one and have five times more traffic on this one site. Is that not correct thinking?

Tim: No, it generally doesn’t work that way. And like I’ve been preaching this niching down theory or strategy or whatever since 2005 or six when I first started branching out and starting other sites. And now it’s like, that’s all anybody who’s talking about at these blogger conferences because there’s so much more competition.

If you go out right now and try to do a general travel site, like, oh, I’m going to travel around the world and write about my, you know, what I do every day. It’s really hard to break through with that these days unless you’re, you know, unless you look really good in a bathing suit and you’re going to blow up on Instagram or something. Right. Excuse me. I got a frog in my throat.

Jack: I think that was you thinking about me in a bikini.

Tim: Or myself. Yeah. So yeah, it makes a lot more sense now to focus on one type of travel or one destination or one, you know, general interest category that you can sort of build a tribe around. And Google likes that more too, honestly, like they want to see authority in a certain subject area, not like a jack-of-all-trades.

Jack: Got it. Do you have, I mean, do you have like, are there Tim groupies and fans that are like, oh my god, he writes this awesome luxury blog, but he also writes this awesome, cheap destinations blog, I need to read both or is there no cross?

Tim: There’s not there’s not any overlap there. Except I’ve got a few contributors that have written for different sites of mine and you know, they know I’m the same person. But otherwise, I kind of keep them compartmentalized. And so the editor of the luxury sites kind of a man of mystery. He has no social media presence.

Jack: Okay. All right.

Tim: But yeah, I mean, I would say most of the people that are actual fans of my writing and my books and my sites, they’re on specific email lists. So that’s how I kind of keep in touch with people. And maybe they’re following me on social media too, but I feel like that’s kind of ephemeral. So I really use the email list to keep in touch with people and kind of tell them what’s going on. Because it’s old school, but that’s one thing that people still open and read is what’s in their email box.

Jack: Yeah, no, I hear you. Well, ok, so you’ve got the blogs, but then clearly writing books and publishing is a component of your work. Why did you start writing and publishing books? Was it a simply financial idea? Was it to stroke the ego? I mean, what was the reasoning behind? If you’ve got these successful blogs and I’m imagining a massive amount of time it takes to run five blogs, where does publishing books come into all that?

Tim: Well, the book actually came first, which is probably kind of backwards to the ideal where you should do it. But I put out the first edition of the World’s Cheapest Destinations.

Jack: Got it.

Tim: Actually, before I started the blog, and I had a print on demand publisher then who said to me, why don’t you just start a blog so you can maybe get a little more publicity for this thing and journalists can find you easier online. And that all made sense to me. And back in the days when, you know, most media was still offline, I thought it would be a way to get quoted in some places.

And so, the reason I started on that book is that it wasn’t one out there that sort of answered the questions or answered the question, you know, where can I travel in the cheap? What are the best value countries in the world? Like if I’m going to go out on a round the world trip for a year, where can I really stretch my budget? And that information was out there in like 20 different places.

Jack: Right.

“I was like, all right, I’m going to put these into one and publish the book. I wish I had, you know, when I was a backpacker, cause I backpacked around the world for three years and I sort of learned a lot along the way about which countries are the best values. So I put it into this book.”

Tim Leffel

Tim: And I was like, all right, I’m going to put these into one and publish the book. I wish I had, you know, when I was a backpacker, cause I backpacked around the world for three years and I sort of learned a lot along the way about which countries are the best values. So I put it into this book. I started the blog. I didn’t think the blog would ever make any money. And then like two years down the line, I started, you know, getting some money from it. And then eventually it started paying my mortgage and I was like, Oh, maybe this is a thing.

So I started some other sites at that point, basically 2006, 07, 08 along there.

Jack: Wow. And when did A Better Life for Half the Price come along that your other book?

Tim: Um, the first one was 2010 and I had, um, yeah, no, that’s not right. That’s when I first moved to Mexico, 2014, sorry. Okay. Um, so about 10 years ago, now it’s on the second edition. Um, I mean, things don’t change that much, but you know, you got to update them every once in a while. Cause people look at the copyright date and they think it’s, it’s ancient. So they don’t want to buy it. 

“I wanted to lay out the pros and cons of each place and the overall pros and cons of moving abroad and just kind of give people the real picture.”

Tim Leffel

Same kind of thing. Like there were a lot of books out there on moving abroad or retiring abroad and whatever. But first of all, not many of them talked about the negatives. You know, you were mentioning the sugar coating before. I mean, if you look at international living, it’s all like gung ho, you know, everything’s wonderful. Come move to paradise, live like a king, you know, all that stuff. And it was really getting on my nerves that that was, you know, most of what was out there. And it’s not all rosy, it’s not all perfect, you know, just like living in your own town’s not perfect, where you are now. And so I wanted to lay out the pros and cons of each place and the overall pros and cons of moving abroad and just kind of give people the real picture.

And focus on where you could move for half the price if you were coming from the USA or Canada. And so the book doesn’t cover every country in the world. It just covers the ones where you can really cut your expenses in half quite easily.

Jack: Yeah, yeah. I feel like we kind of semi, we’re like tiptoeing down that path. We were in Minneapolis and we moved down to a town called Winona, which is like two hours south of Minneapolis, and we are having a better life for about 20%.

Tim: Yeah, that’s good, that’s a start.

Jack: We’re not 50, but I mean, it’s crazy. I mean, people don’t realize, I think what’s cool about the book is that you really hammer home like, hey, you don’t need to necessarily make more if you’re saving more, which is a neat idea that I think folks should listen or consider that.

So your other book that I obviously am a huge fan of Travel Writing 2.0, new edition coming out. What can folks expect? Give listeners an idea of what Travel Writing 2.0 is and then for mega Tim fans like me, what can we expect from the new edition that’s coming out here in September?

Tim: Yeah, so I guess I try to do something a little differently with each of these books so I’m not like duplicating what’s already out there. And what I tried to do with this book is first of all, point out the fact that we’re in the digital age now and the rules have changed. And there’s a lot of travel writing books out there that really concentrate on, they spend most of their time on sending queries to editors and getting into magazines and honing your crafts so you can write great narratives and all that kind of stuff, which is all well and good, but that’s not how most people are making money these days. And so I wanted to concentrate on how people are actually earning a living as travel writers or bloggers.

And so there’s not much in the book at all about how to craft good pros and, you know, write compelling sentences because there’s plenty of other books you can read about that. What I wanted to concentrate on is, you know, how do you actually earn real money from this enough to pay your bills if you want, or, you know, to create a nice side hustle if you’ve got a day job. And so, you know, that’s the real focus.

As far as what has changed, I mean, time slips away from us really easily. And I think the last edition was 2016 or 17, something like that, which is a lifetime ago in the digital world. And so I wanted to update it and get rid of like old social media platforms that don’t exist anymore and tools that don’t exist.

And a lot of things have changed in terms of how Google’s running its operation and how you get found, affiliate programs have changed, all this stuff, it’s just a natural evolution. I mean, I don’t think the fundamentals have changed that much. It’s still all about, you know, putting out good unique content that’s better than what else is out there and, you know, defining your expertise and all of that. But, you know, a lot of the tools and the specifics have changed a lot. So I wanted to get that updated.

And a lot of people dropped out that I quoted in the book last time around. And so I wanted to get some new faces in there and kind of talk more about what’s working in the here and now.

“One thing that’s really changed is people are making a lot more money than they were in 2016. So that’s really encouraging. I ran a survey both times on what people are earning now…and one out of five people were grossing six figures or more, which is really encouraging.”

Tim Leffel

One thing that’s really changed is people are making a lot more money than they were in 2016. So that’s really encouraging. I ran a survey both times on what people are earning now. And this time I got more than 200 responses and one out of five people were grossing six figures or more, which is really encouraging.

And I mean, before it was some, but now it’s like, if you go to a travel bloggers conference, you know, one out of five people you’re running into is going to be making real money and it’s comfortable and like they’re living a the kind of life a white color cubicle dweller would, you know, so I think that’s really nice.

And it’s mostly because of digital. It’s not because freelancers are getting paid more. That’s for sure. It’s because if you publish your own material, you just have a lot better ways of monetizing that material than you used to. 

Jack: Yeah. No, that’s fascinating. What, I mean, you said that things are changing and stuff. And like I said, before we started recording, Kitty and I have just all of a sudden, literally within the last month or two, we were like, we write these pieces. I mean, if we were talking about a specific town and that town happened to share it on their Facebook page, we’d get an uptick in our traffic. But we were just like, little by little, I mean, it’s been like, a little by little climb.

We’ve actually like, I mean, I can tell you like, you know, we have five times the more traffic than we had in January, but we’re trying to do, you know, we’re trying to make it better every month.

And then all of a sudden she’s like, every person I run into talks about SEO and how important SEO is. And for folks that, I mean, could you explain to the lay person, A) what SEO is? Cause I know you could do it a hell of a lot better than I could. But also, I mean, is that an important aspect of your business now?

Are you really, are you, you know, before we started we were talking about, you know, another blogger who is very commercial and is doing like, killing it just writing SEO, you know, posts. What are, where’s the balance for you? And kind of talk a little bit about SEO for folks that A) don’t know what it is and B) want to really have their game.

Tim: Yeah. Sure, well that stands for search engine optimization and basically it means doing certain steps when you write an article that will help you get found in Google by people that are searching for certain things.

So that could be as simple as someone looking for the best luxury hotel in Merida in Mexico, for example, or it could be as specific as, you know, how to hike the Annapurna trail in Nepal or where to get the best cheese curds in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

People are usually searching those kinds of things, like best, fastest, easiest, whatever. So if you can get those kinds of keywords into your post and concentrate on that, then you have a better chance of those people coming to your site.

“They want to see that a real person wrote it, that you have expertise, that you’ve been there, that you know what you’re talking about, that kind of thing.”

Tim Leffel

But of course, not everything is about that kind of intent. Not everything is commercial. And a lot of times you’re writing for personal experience. If you do a certain adventure, you’re gonna write about your adventure and maybe at the end, you’ll have some practical information, but it’s not all about the reader. It’s also about what you did. And that’s important too, in Google’s eyes, they want to see that a real person wrote it, not a robot, which is all the rage now with the AI tools. They want to see that a real person wrote it, that you have expertise, that you’ve been there, that you know what you’re talking about, that kind of thing.

But yeah, it’s a fine line because I have one site that’s called Travel Narratives, and Google hates those kinds of articles. It doesn’t know what to do with them because they don’t answer any search queries. They’re just stories about someone’s travels. And so frankly, I don’t get very good traffic on my Perceptive Travel site. It wins tons of awards. So I compare it to like an indie movie studio, like all the critics love the output, but it doesn’t make much money, compared to Marvel movies and Star Wars movies, whatever. 

So a fully commercial SEO article, you’re trying to be like a blockbuster in the movie theater. You’re trying to get high volume keywords, high volume search traffic. So some of those people will come to your site.

So for example, if you have a very authoritative site, maybe you can write an article about the best hotels in London, and you can rank in the top five and you will get tons of traffic, if you can. But it’s very unlikely that your blog or my blog even is gonna rank for that because we’re up against you know, all these high authority sites that have been around forever and have a huge traffic, plus you’re up against commercial ones like TripAdvisor and Expedia and Booking.com and they’re spending a fortune, you know, on the backend on SEO and they’re spending a fortune on the front end, paying Google directly to show up in the ad. At the top.

So anyway, the ideal is, I mean, if you want the shortcut, when you’re starting out for the first two or three years, you should go for things that have some search volume, but don’t have heavy competition. So for example, going back to that London example, maybe you would write about the best three hotels near a certain landmark, for example, or near the theater district, for example.

Like you might have a chance of ranking for that because it’s a much lower search volume, but people really care, you know, that are looking for hotels near that. Or I’ve done ones about hotels near a certain airport or near a certain train station, you know, things like that, because people do search on that constantly. And that way you have a better chance of actually showing up on the first page of Google.

And you can extend that kind of thinking across, you know, any kind of website, not just travel. But you want to, when you’re starting out, you want to concentrate on things that you can actually show up for in Google, rather than things that you have no chance in the world of ranking for.

Jack: Got it. So my hard hitting expose on the best cheese curds in Wisconsin or in Eau Claire or La Crosse…

Tim: Yeah, that would probably like maybe only 30 people a month are searching for that. But if you show up at number one, you’ll get half of them. And then you can maybe, uh, you know, put it in a link for where to stay in town or, uh, renting a car, that kind of thing.

Jack: Are you back engineering your articles? I mean, are you thinking and by that, I mean, are you thinking like, oh, okay, I need, I need to write an article to rank in this case. Are you, are you just writing whatever the heck you want to write now? Or are you writing a balance of the two where you want traffic, but you also want, do you see what I’m saying? Like, are you, are you picking a keyword and then?

Tim: It’s a, it’s a balance. Sometimes I write things just because I want to write them. It’s something I’m interested in.

Like, I just wrote this article about these weird gravestones in the cemetery in Sofia in Bulgaria. Like that’s never going to get any search traffic. And I don’t care. Like it was just a funny article, you know, with some funny pictures. And I thought it would be fun to cover.

But you know, there are other times where I’m writing something completely commercial. I just wrote something about the best day trips from Kalamata in Greece. That’s a really good base in the Peloponnesian Peninsula because you can go out and do all these different things from there.

And I’ll have, you know, I have tour links in there. I have a rental car link, I have hotel links. And so for something like that, I’m gonna do keyword research and see what, you know, people are searching for and see what I can rank for. And then I’m gonna adjust my title and my subheads accordingly so that I can hopefully catch some of that search traffic.

But then the ones that I do on Perceptive Travel, whether I write them or somebody else does, the only keyword research I’m really doing for that is for the title and description. Like if I can slightly tweak the title and maybe rank for a search term, then I’ll do that. Or if I can slightly tweak the introduction and the meta tags, but otherwise I’m not gonna mess with somebody’s writing just to make it more search friendly. You know, it’s a narrative, it’s a story.

So yeah, so it’s a very different thing, but I do use keyword research tools and, you know, they all cost a bit of money, but you know, a lot of it’s just common sense. Do a search in Google yourself and see what’s coming up. And Google will suggest related things and you can pretty much get a sense of what you’re up against just doing that.

Jack: Yeah. Is that Bulgaria, is that the cemetery where they have the paintings of how the person passed away?

Tim: Yeah, some of that. And they have these super realistic tombstones where it’s like someone’s picture that’s been etched into it. And the article I wrote, the foes are funny because the picture they took is really ugly sometimes. Like a guy in a wife beater tank top and he’s holding like a plastic cup of beer. Really? That was the best one you could find.

Jack: Yeah, no, that’s like, what’s the, there was something about how like, if you ever watch those, I used to be addicted to like the true crime shows and like they would, they always have like one photo and it’s like the least flattering photo of the suspect you can find. And they keep repeating it, like you’ll see it 40 times in an episode. It’s like, of course, yeah, yeah, those are crazy.

Well, so, are you with the, with the SEO blogs, are you, is it like a ratio? Are you like for every one commercial blog, I’m going to write a fun blog or I’m going to write, or are you just doing what I like? You’re at a point in your career where you are just having fun with it. And that’s that…

Tim: Yeah, I mean, something you’ll discover after you’ve been doing this a while is it’s your old evergreen posts to get the most traffic over time. So, you know, sometimes I’m going back in, I’m tweaking the old ones or adding more material to it. And when I do that, I’ll make them a little more SEO friendly, make them a little more, you know, put in some more affiliate links maybe.

But yeah, there’s no ratio. Like sometimes I’m just answering reader questions. And I’ve written about this on the travel writing blog. I think it’s kind of crazy when people turn off their comments because you get: first of all, those people are often fact checkers and typo finders and things like that. And they’ll tell you how you can make your post better where you’ve made a mistake.

But also I get a lot of ideas through comments on the blog because people will put a question in there. I mean, sometimes they’ll email me or put it on Facebook or whatever, but a lot of times they’ll still put it on the blog. And so I get a lot of reader ideas.

If I see the same question coming up over and over, I’ll write a post about it, whether it’s getting any search traffic or not, according to the tools. Like those tools aren’t perfect, first of all. And obviously if three or four people have the same question, then others do too. And so I’ll write a post that addresses something like that.

And, you know, maybe it’s not going to be a home run getting thousands of page views, but you know, if it gets consistent traffic every month, that’s what I’m trying to do with every post.

Jack: Yeah. Well, that’s great. Tell me social media, how does that play into your world? Is it, I mean, are you just doing it because you have to, or is there specific platforms that is a must, or where are you at? It feels like you’re really in camp “build your own world”, and it just kind of, is it an afterthought for you, or where are you at with all that?

Tim: Yeah, I’m kind of all about what gets results, you know? And so I do a lot of testing and looking at my analytics and whatever, not obsessively, but you know, every two weeks or a month, I’ll dive in and see what’s working and what’s not working and just try to keep pace with that.

I mean, things go through phases too. There was a time there when Pinterest was sending tons of traffic to people’s blogs and so everybody went all in on Pinterest and then this happens every time the company changes their algorithm and decides, oh, we’re not going to send you all that traffic anymore for free. Now you got to pay us.

And, you know, we’ve seen that happen with Instagram, with Facebook, with Twitter, and it inevitably gets to that. So if you’re doing well on something now like TikTok, just wait. There’s going to be a time where the same thing happens then, because it’s just a pattern that keeps repeating itself.

So I get very frustrated with social media. I’m kind of on it because I need to be I need to stay visible. But I do have a lot of help in that area. You were talking about, you know, the effort that takes to run five different sites. And I could not do all that without some help. And so I have somebody managing my Facebook pages for the specific sites. And I have someone putting up pins on Pinterest and sometimes things on Twitter for me.

And so I just go in like for a half an hour, an hour here and there and just like be social, actually the original intent of social media. And, you know, I’ll just throw stuff up that I think is interesting or, um, you know, I’ll put links to some older stories that are relevant, but honestly, like, if I had all the social media traffic together, it’s less than 10% for my various sites and Facebook’s probably the best. Like sometimes, you know, that will get like to five, eight, 10% on its own. Sometimes if something gets shared a lot, like you were talking about, like if a hotel shares a hotel post or, you know, convention and visitors of bureau shares a post about their destination, then that will give it a little spike for a while.

But it’s, I mean, most of those platforms want to keep people on their platform. So you’re, you’re, you’re going to get more likes and more, um, algorithm appearances on a post that’s nothing but a picture and some text, then you are linking out to your own article, which is unfortunate, but that’s just the way they work. 

Jack: Yeah. Any specific plans with the new edition of the book? I mean, are you going to do a series of YouTube videos or any crazy, you like social media? I mean, are we going to see a Tim TikTok where you’re dancing all the latest trends or are you just keep doing what you’re doing and it’s working?

Tim: And actually TikTok is the one I’m not on. I’m sure it’s getting older, but my 22 year old daughter said she’s too old for TikTok, so that tells you something.

Jack: It’s pretty horrible.

Tim: But I mean, it’s doing well for some people for sure. But I think there’s a limit to how many things you could be active on. And so I do try to like, I am on YouTube and I have, I don’t know, 20, some hundred subscribers. It’s monetized, but I’m kind of lazy about that too. I put up one or two videos a month, I think. So I don’t know what I will do. I mean, I do, when this travel writing book, new edition comes out, I probably will like do the podcast circuit a bit, because you know, we’re on one of these right now and I do like them because you’re in somebody’s ear for a while and they’re, you know, hearing a more detailed story than they’re going to get on an Instagram really, you know?

And so I do think podcasts are quite valuable and I, I do try to spend time on them and before we started recording, you were talking about how you heard me on one that I think I recorded five or six years ago and that’s the beauty of these things, you know, people discover a podcast and then they go back and look at the archives and you know, it can take on a new life later.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. So how are you, I mean, as far as standing out, if we talked earlier about the, “hey, I just graduated, mom and dad, I’m starting a travel blog, look at me!” How do people stand out in this sea of travel bloggers where you’re, there’s so many, it’s like you said, I mean, 2003, there’s a handful, 2023, it’s like, literally every person at the coffee shops here in Winona, it feels like is a travel blogger. So tell me, how are you, how would you stand out? What are you?

Tim: Yeah, it’s funny? I think it kind of dropped off a lot in the P, and a lot of people went and got a real job or whatever. But now it’s picking back up again, because you’re right, people are traveling again, and it’s kind of back to normal. 

But it’s going to take a while no matter what. Like even if you do everything right, you know, maybe you can start getting some search traffic in a year. But you know, that’s like the soonest that Google’s really going to take your site seriously. And the reason is because there’s so many spammers and scammers out there. And like now you’ve got these AI generated websites and like all this stuff that’s, you know, the human’s not even proofing anything and it’s complete garbage.

And so Google wants to not take your site seriously until they know you’re for real and that they know you’re going to stick with it. So I think there’s a lot of different reasons in there, but you know, one of them is they want to see that you’ve actually got a body of work and that you’re publishing regularly and that you’re going to keep doing this. So there’s this thing called the Google sandbox that you’re just kind of stuck in for a while until, until they start thinking that you’re for real.

“And so the longer you publish, the better it gets. So after two years, you’re going to start showing up on the first page of Google for some things, regularly, and then after three years you’re going to be treated like any other website out there.”

Tim Leffel

And so the longer you publish, the better it gets. So after two years, you’re going to start showing up on the first page of Google for some things, regularly, and then after three years you’re going to be treated like any other website out there. And those aren’t exact figures.

There are some people that have managed to kind of pole vault over this by really figuring out the SEO game early on and going after all the right things that they could rank for. And sometimes they’ve gotten a lot of traction within a year or two, but I would say that’s the minimum you’re looking at.

So keep your day job or keep your other thing that is bringing in an income and maybe do some freelancing on the side or some other things that are going to bring you some more immediate income because it’s just going to take a while to build up blog traffic.

And that’s not unique to blogging. I mean, there’s this podcast called the Tropical MBA that I’ve listened to for ages and they’re all about online entrepreneurship of all kinds. And they have this thing called the thousand day rule, which is basically any new business you start it’s going to take a thousand days before it starts making up for what you left your corporate job for.

So in other words, don’t quit your day job and start something new and then expect like two weeks later to be making the same thing. Even if it’s a hot dog stand, it’s gonna take a while.

Jack: Yeah, absolutely. Tell me…

Tim: But as far as standing out, sorry, I didn’t answer your question. As far as standing out, try to do something different. Look at what else is out there and don’t duplicate. Don’t look at somebody’s blog that’s been around for 10 years and say, I’m gonna do one just like that because your chances of succeeding doing just like that are probably pretty slim.

Like find a more narrow niche to go after. It’s better to start small and expand later than to try to do it the other way.

Jack: Yeah, yeah. Well, you touched upon it and you started talking, and I mean, you mentioned the other podcast and it was the Joanna Penn, the Creative Penn podcast, which if you guys haven’t listened to Tim’s episode, we’ll link it to the show notes of this episode, but it’s great. And she’s an amazing interviewer. And that show was fantastic.

Joanna’s obviously all about AI and she’s a futurist and she’s like, I mean, techie and all this stuff. Actually, I just finished her new fiction book. And at the end, she talks, she has an entire page dedicated to how she used AI within the context of the book, not for the actual writing, but for the research. And she used this AI tool for coming up with ideas for imagery and all this stuff.

Have you dabbled at all with AI in your writing? I mean, from the sense, I mean, I’ve been reading your blog. I actually binged the Travel Writing 2.0 blog and went to post one and just finished a couple of weeks ago with like the most recent post. And I mean, I don’t get the sense that you’re just going to ChatGPT and saying, hey, write me something awesome. But have you have you futzed with that at all? Or is that something you just don’t care about?

Tim: No, I have dabbled with it. And I’ve what I’ve used it the most for is outlines. If I’m writing kind of a long article or blog post, and I know there’s going to be a lot of things that I have to get in there, I will use, I use this thing it’s Koala.sh or dot ch, I’m not sure, but it’s kind of a scan that goes over the newest ChatGPT and is specifically for writers. And they have a few functions that I like, which is they will do the outline first, and then you can adjust the outline. You can remove things or move them around or whatever, and then hit, you know, write the article.

And a lot of what comes out is complete crap, but the outline is still really good. You know, so if nothing else, I can use that. And then I’ll just pull bits and pieces.

The problem with it for me is I can’t trust it. Like I don’t feel like factually it’s correct half the time and it’ll spit out stuff very confidently that is completely wrong. You know, and so if you’re not as a human going in fact checking that, it’s bad. But the other thing I like about that Koala service is you can check a box where you could say site sources. And so then you can see where they got the information. But again, it’s citing things that are like, Culture Trip or Forbes or, you know, Wiki Travel or things that I wouldn’t necessarily trust in the first place. So that doesn’t give me much confidence either. You know, so.

Yeah. I have not found that it will replace a human writer or myself, but I do feel like it will at least get you down, get you started down the right path. And then you can, you know, kind of decide from there whether it’s worthwhile.

And then I will use it to, um, look up historical information because I figure that kind of stuff, they’re usually going to get right. Cause they’re just pulling it from Wikipedia and you know, equivalent sources. So they’ll at least have the right dates in there, you know? So, um, I use it to save a little time on things like that.

And then I know people that have used it for factual things that are like, um, Oh, what are, you know, name all the pet friendly hotels and an ex location or, you know, name all the state parks in this state, you know, like Wisconsin, for example, like what are all the state parks in Wisconsin? It’s probably going to get something like that right to at least, you know, tell you what you need to cover in your article.

But for me, it’s like it shaves off an hour maybe or two if I’m lucky, but I haven’t gotten much more out of it yet.

Jack: Yeah. Do you have a quota you’re giving yourself as far as publishing? I mean, are you trying to churn out an article a day or is it an article a week? Where are you at with your…what, what is a typical week? Say in the office look like for you.

Tim: Yeah, I’m always like worried about saying this because people are like, oh my god, you’re working so much and like hours wise, I don’t work crazy hours and I get eight hours of sleep every night like clockwork like I think it’s really important to stay well rested, especially if you’re trying to do creative things, but I probably crank out like 10 or 15,000 words of content a week between the various websites. And then I’m editing what others have written too on top of that.

But once you get on a roll, yeah, I probably do four or five articles a week. Some of those are easier than others. Some of them are just updates of old posts. But yeah, I mean, for better or for worse, Google is rewarding long articles more than short ones. Like it’s really hard to get away with just writing 400 or 500 words these days and have it rank. It’s still possible, but it’s tougher. And they’re kind of rewarding more comprehensive pieces. So I feel like it takes longer to write a whole blog post than it did 5 or 10 years ago, because you’re having to put more into it, because your competition is, you know, like it or not.

Jack: Yeah, yeah, I know. Is there some system you’re using to keep track of all of your digital assets? Do you have some database where there’s a master of all of the articles you’ve written in your career or is it just kind of haphazardly going up online?

Tim: Yeah, that would be a really nice thing to do. I should work on that. No, I use some tools here and there that organize things. And I just started playing around with one called Clarity, on my Cheapest Destinations blog that will save some time and save you from having to do spreadsheets like that, because it will basically organize your content in any way you want. 

It’s like, it’ll go out and find, you know, ones that don’t have any internal links, ones that don’t have any external links, ones that haven’t been updated in 6 years, ones that are getting less than 10 hits a month from Google, you know, you can use it to sort by criteria like that. So I would rather use something like that than to try to keep track of a bunch of spreadsheets.

But what really saves my sanity is I try to keep on a pretty simple editorial schedule. I basically do one post a week for my Cheapest Destinations blog, one post a week for the Luxury one. I do two a month for my Hotel Scoop site, and then I have other writers contributing other days. I do one or two a month for my Perceptive Travel blog.

So, you know, I kind of know what I have coming up and what I need to work on. And then I am a strong advocate of the three important things a day rule. Like, you know, I’ve got this old school to-do list here, which is basically just a sheet of paper with all this scrawled on it. But I have these little stars beside some of them, and these are things that really have to get done.

And so, you know, like today, for example, okay, I wrote one blog post in the morning, I got on this podcast with you, I’ll do one more thing in the afternoon that’s important. And then the rest is gravy in my mind.

Like, you know, there’s a long list of things I could be doing and will be doing at some point, but I think people drive themselves crazy with phone lists and calendars and, you know, getting too organized and too optimized. And I think you’ve got to allow some time in there for putting out fires that come up, or maybe your power goes off or your internet goes down. Or you just need to get out of the house and take a walk. You know, like.

Jack: Well, yeah, you have a pretty nice town to walk in.

Tim: Yeah, it is. And if your friend calls up and says, hey, let’s go have a drink, I want to be able to go. I don’t have to worry about like, oh, I’ve got 14 more things on my to-do list.

Jack: Right. I feel like I tried to like on Spotify, I searched you and tried to listen to as many of the podcasts. I feel like I’ve listened to several, hosted by different people. And I feel like the Joanna Penn one, she asks you like, hey, what are you using for your, your calendar and you’re like, well, I have a piece of paper and a pen. And her reaction was like, “oh my God!”

Tim: Yeah. I gotta say, I have adjusted a little bit, like important things like this interview we’re doing, or if I have a phone call, I do put that on my phone calendar. But those are the only things, like something that’s involving another person that I have an obligation. I also have a whiteboard. I don’t want to turn this laptop around, but I’ve got a whiteboard that like hotels I have to review for hotel scoop and articles I have to do that I’m obligated because I went on a press trip or something or sometimes there’s paid sponsored posts that I have to get done in and also have all the conferences coming up and travel.

And then I also use this app called Tripit for travel that I would highly recommend. I use the free version. I don’t pay for it and what you can do with that is it’ll forward all automatically forward all your travel bookings from your emails. So like every hotel you book, every Airbnb book, every plane ticket you book, it all shows up on  automatically. So I kind of use that as my second brain for travel.

Jack:  Cool. No, that’s good to know. Well, cool.

Tim: So I’m not completely old school, but I do try to not be tied to my phone too much. I believe our phones are fantastic tools. You know, it’s great to have a computer in your pocket, but they can also be very addictive. And I don’t want to like be staring at it all day, every day.

Jack: I still don’t try. I mean, I still am like, I don’t trust. I feel like I’ll wake up one day and my entire calendar will be gone or my email will be gone. And I’ll just be like, what am I supposed to do? So like, I trust this.

Tim: Yeah.

Jack: Yeah, well, cool. Well, hey, I don’t want to take all your time. You’ve been incredible. I have one more question. And I usually wrap up things with this. So let me ask you, using only three words, describe the life of a travel writer.

Tim: Oh, wow. Just three…

Jack: This is my James Lipton type question.

Tim: Yeah, yeah. It’s so contradictory. That’s the problem.

Jack: You know, you can’t swear either on the show.

“It is fun. That’s why people get start doing it in the first place. I mean, being a travel writer is a lot more fun than laying asphalt or picking lettuce or something. That’s for sure.”

Tim Leffel

Tim: Okay. Fun. I mean, cause it is fun. That’s why people get start doing it in the first place. I mean, being a travel writer is a lot more fun than laying asphalt or picking lettuce or something. That’s for sure.

Jack: Aren’t you the guy that said that Mick Jagger, if he wasn’t, was that in your book that if he wasn’t a, in the Rolling Stones, you wanted to be a travel writer? No, it wasn’t me. I swear, yes, you said that, didn’t you?

Tim: No, it wasn’t me, but I know a lot of actors have said that they wanna be a travel writer, and some of them have started travel shows, which is kind of funny.

Jack: Maybe it was the book you’re in, that “How To Be a Travel Writer” book. You know what I’m talking about?

Tim: No.

Jack: Hold on. I feel like it’s this book, “How to Be a Travel Writer”?

Tim: Oh, okay. Somebody else…I’m quoted in there a few times.

Jack: Yeah. And I feel like they said that if like Mick Jagger has said that if he could do any career, he’d much rather be a travel writer than be in the Rolling Stones.

Tim: That’s funny. Yeah. Um, this is not maybe the best word, but comprehensive because the cover of my Travel Writing 2.0 book, which I’m going to keep that a similar illustration has a six armed like Indian, you know, goddess kind of thing. And like there’s a notebook, there’s a phone, there’s a camera, you know, all these different tools that you’re using. And I’m adding in this new one, a drone flying over here, because some people have a drone controller too. So the idea is you’ve got to wear all these different hats if you’re a travel writer these days.

Like it used to be, you know, if you wrote for GQ in the old days in the magazine only days, then you didn’t have to take any photos. There was a photographer for that. And you just wrote up the text and sent it in and you were done and it was pretty cushy.

But now, you know, you’ve got to be a tech person to maintain your blog. You’ve got to, you know, be a photographer. You’ve got to be a videographer, all these different things. So yeah, comprehensive, I think is a really good one.

And I think the last one would be dedicated because if you’re not persistent with this, if you’re not really all in on it, then you’re going to quit in a year or two because it’s going to take that long before you start getting enough positive feedback…especially monetarily, that you start saying, oh, okay, I’m really onto something here. I’m building up an audience. I’m getting people to sign up for my email list. My traffic from Google is going up. I think I’m gonna start seeing that hockey stick chart that I’ve been waiting for.

But until that point, it’s kind of like a lot of shouting into the dark. Your moms are reading, your friends are reading, but you’re not getting a lot of positive reinforcement for a while.

So I think you have to be dedicated and persistent.

And that’s true for freelance writers too. Like you’re going to get a lot of rejections from editors and a lot of people telling you, no, or just plain ignoring you and you’re going to get it.

You kind of have to be a sales rep in that sense, whether you’re a freelancer or a blogger trying to work out direct deals or anything like that. 

Like, I think that’s a rude awakening for a lot of people, you know, maybe they even left a sales job to become a travel writer and then they found out they got to become a sales rep again: what?!

Jack: Yeah, exactly. Well, cool. I really appreciate it. You are, you know, we, Kitty and I are, like I said, we’re baby, we’ve, I guess, officially, we consider we started taking this seriously in February. So I mean, it hasn’t even been a year for us. It’s been challenging, but super, super fun. And it’s actually been, even when we were, traveling. I mean, we spent two decades traveling literally the world as musicians.

And we actually, I know you lived in Nashville for a while and we were in Nashville. And, you know, I loved it, but we always talked about, wouldn’t it be great if we could just focus on the travel side of things and presenting all the cool stuff we’re doing and not have to bring, you know, 10 other people and guitars and drum sets and all this stuff. You know, this has been a real, we finally just realized, you know, we’re not getting any younger. We need to do something that is a passion of ours. And so I think…

Tim: Well, I think you’ve gotten through the worst part. So remember that. You know, it will get steadily better.

Jack: Well, I guess that was my clumsy way of saying, I appreciate you and I appreciate your honesty and the books you’re putting out. And I think if anybody is even slightly interested in travel writing, this would be the go-to for me. I’ve got a shelf of about 20 other books that I’ve read in the last six months and by far I feel like your Travel Writing 2.0 is the one that like just it’s so worth it you guys. Like, get this book it’s so good.

Tim: Well thanks man and yeah so if anybody’s interested the old one’s not useless um just a lot of time references are out of date so um hang on and if you can check out the new one this fall you’ll get a more updated version. 

Jack: All right so you’re saying that the MySpace you don’t talk about MySpace in this.

Tim: No, but there are some things I mentioned in there that are gone. I think like Vine and Periscope. I guess, yeah, what’s the one that’s Snapchat? It’s still out there, but like who’s on it anymore that’s not a teenager, you know?

Jack: Just people on Catfish. That’s the only time I ever hear anybody say Snapchat is when I’m watching episodes of Catfish.

Tim: Sometimes I hear it when I watch the CNBC and I’m like, what? That’s a public company? They’re still active?

Jack: I know it’s really bizarre. Well, cool. Well, I appreciate you so much. Tim, you’re the best. Where can folks find you if they want to start experiencing your world?

Tim: Well, everything links out from my portfolio site, and I have a pretty uncommon name. So it’s timleffel.com, T-I-M-L-E-F-F-E-L. From there, you can get to all of my websites and some freelance pieces I’ve done, and social channels, and all that good stuff.

Jack: You’re the best. Thank you so much, Tim.

Tim: Well, thanks for having me on. It was good talking with you and keep me posted later when you start seeing that hockey stick chart.

Jack: I’ll do that. All right, I’m gonna hit stop on the recording and then I’m going to say a real goodbye not these Hollywood goodbyes that we’re currently in the midst of. Actually, we’re in the midst of a Minnesota goodbye. Do you know what a Minnesota goodbye is?

Tim: No.

Jack: It’s where we cannot say goodbye. Like we just keep talking like…

Tim: That’s an Irish goodbye too.

Jack: Is that an Irish goodbye?

Tim: I think so.

Jack: Like it starts at the dinner table and we start saying, oh, I should probably get going. And then we get to the door and we put on our jacket and we talk a little more. Then you’d follow me out to the car and we talk a little bit. Then I’d start driving home and I think of something funny to say. So I give you a call and we keep saying goodbye. And that that is an official Minnesota goodbye. That’s what we’re having right now.

Tim: All right. Well, I did find people to be very friendly and nice up there. Um, I was just in your area and, uh, drink some good beer too.

Jack: Yeah. You were in La Crosse, weren’t you? Yeah. La Crosse and Eau Claire.

Tim: And, uh, I did a beer and cheese curds tour in Eau Claire. So that I got the full on experience.

Jack: It doesn’t get any more Wisconsin than that. All right. Take it easy, Tim.

Tim: See you later.

Segment: Closer 

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Kitty: Wow, what a great interview. Tim is a really insightful guy.

Jack: He is. After talking with Tim, I was pretty jazzed about this whole travel writer game.

Kitty: It’s exciting to have successful folks on the show, chatting about how they got to where they are. Hopefully you guys get lots of inspiration for your own creative journeys. Remember, every Sunday we do shows just like this.

Jack: Yup, so be sure to tune in on Sundays for fun interviews, and every day for quirky stories from right here in Minnesota and the Midwest.

Kitty: Guys, as a special thank you for listening today, visit JackAndKitty.com to download our free guidebook called, “Best in the Midwest: Your Guide To Epic Fun”. Again, that’s JackAndKitty.com. It’s our way of thanking you for listening today.

Jack: Speaking of thank yous, we want to give a very special shout-out to all our patrons on Patreon.

Kitty: Yes, thanks for your support.

Jack: And finally, if you’d like to talk with other listeners about today’s show, visit our Facebook page to chat and share your thoughts.

Kitty: All of these links can be found in the show notes, along with a transcription of today’s episode. Find that at JackAndKitty.com. Thanks for listening!

Jack: And on behalf of my better half, have a super day!

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